page_title: Eastern Slavic naming customs
section_title: Short forms
hierarchical_section_title: Eastern Slavic naming customs / Given names / Forms / Short forms
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of Nicholas II of Russia Русский: Фотография Николая II Українська: Фотографія Миколи II
context_page_description: Eastern Slavic naming customs are the traditional way of identifying a person's given name and patronymic name in countries formerly part of the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union.
  They are commonly used in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and to an extent in Kyrgyzstan and Georgia. It is named after the East Slavic language group that the Russian language belongs to. They are also found occasionally in the Balkans among older generations.
context_section_description: The "short name" (Russian: краткое имя kratkoye imya), historically also "half-name" (Russian: полуимя poluimya), is the simplest and most common name derivative. Bearing no suffix, it is produced suppletively and always has the declension noun ending for both males and females, thus making short forms of certain unisex names indistinguishable: for example, Sasha (Russian: Саша) is the short name for both the masculine name Aleksandr (Alexander) and the feminine form Aleksandra (Alexandra).
  Some names, such as Zhanna (Jeana) and Mark have no short forms, and others may have two (or more) different forms. In the latter case, one form is usually more informal than the other.
caption: Николай II (Nicholas II), the last Russian emperor. In private, his wife addressed him as Nicki, in the German manner, rather than Коля (Kolya), which is the East Slavic short form of his name.
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